


see, i have to burn your kingdom down

by egelantier



Series: the war is won before it's begun [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Betrayal, F/F, Magic, Revolution, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29510106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/pseuds/egelantier
Summary: On the last day of the moon, Sparrow had gone to Lord Zussa and told him, on her knees, about how her mistress was going to commit a horrible deed on midnight. Lord-Protector pressed her for details but she cried and bowed, repeating that he was sure not to believe her, that it would be Her Ladyship's word against hers, that she'd be exiled; and she begged him to come see for himself.Back in the Tower, Sparrow slipped into the room quietly, for she knew that today the queen was not to be distracted or consoled with her chatter; she sat at the queen's feet and sorted the threads, and counted her heartbeats in the silence between them, and wished she had the courage to lean her head against Zinnia's knee.
Relationships: The Queen/Lady-in-Waiting
Series: the war is won before it's begun [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919812
Comments: 8
Kudos: 5





	see, i have to burn your kingdom down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caracalliope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caracalliope/gifts).



On the last day of the moon, Sparrow had gone to Lord Zussa and told him, on her knees, about how her mistress was going to commit a horrible deed on midnight. Lord-Protector pressed her for details but she cried and bowed, repeating that he was sure not to believe her, that it would be Her Ladyship's word against hers, that she'd be exiled; and she begged him to come see for himself. 

Her distress was quite genuine. The way she appealed to his role as the keeper of Harath's purity, the one who would protect everybody, big and small, from the dangers within and without their souls, was a touch manufactured - but within what would be expected of her. 

Lord Zussa listened to her, head in hand, and thought carefully. If the Queen was truly guilty - of magic, of treachery, of consorting with enemies - he'd purge her and save her soul, as would be his duty. But the warlords, however often he beat them down, grumbled in their keeps, and rumors flew over the marketplaces, and the land was uneasy. The dowager queen, as long as he kept her safe and sound, was an guarantee of peace. If she was to be cleansed, the entire country might go up in flames within a week. He didn't doubt his ability to contain the fires, but why court them needlessly?

He would go alone, and see what needed to be done, and if anything could be salvaged. Perhaps the maid - he spared her a glance, noticing her red-limned eyes, her tightly-pressed palms - was overset or hysterical, or would need to be declared so, at the later date. Perhaps not; but this could be mended by keeping the dowager queen in tighter seclusion, without the relative freedom of her garden and her craft he had so mercifully provided her with before. For her own good, of course; for her own good was Harath's own good, and therefore Zussa's.

* * *

Back in the Tower, Sparrow slipped into the room quietly, for she knew that today the queen was not to be distracted or consoled with her chatter; she sat at the queen's feet and sorted the threads, and counted her heartbeats in the silence between them, and wished she had the courage to lean her head against Zinnia's knee. 

Over her head, Zinnia's needle flashed, over and over gold and green, the queen's face serene and severe as she focused on her task. 

The sentries stood their guard; one stared placidly into the middle distance, occupying himself, as he always did, with the wistful imagining of a tavern he'll open with what he's saved of his pay over the years, once he'd retire. The other, far more sensitive than her partner, stood trying not to shiver, and told herself it was only wind, whistling through the cracks.

* * *

Half-candle before midnight, the queen put in the last thread. She rose to her feet; Sparrow rose a moment after her, her blood beating madly in her throat, and saw the queen open her hands and _pull_...

Afterward, Zinnia walked to the door she wasn't allowed to touch for two decades, and pushed it open, stood on the threshold. The wind crept up the spiral staircase, cold and biting, and Zinnia's nostrils flared in hunger. 

She turned away from it and walked toward the stairs leading to the garden. The demure grey of her mourning clothes bled into red and gold with each barefoot step; and Sparrow followed.

* * *

For twenty years, Lord Zussa had only entered the queen's garden once, when he'd gifted it to her, fifteen years before. He had, at this moment, feared that the queen would go mad and therefore upset the tidy clarity of his rule, and the garden was a compromise: something living that she could focus on, contained enough to be harmless, but with enough change to it. Even back then - even when it'd worked, and the queen had begun behaving decorously and with full understanding of her role once again - it made him uneasy, this overabundance of living things caught between the walls his masons built. The plants seemed dangerously willful to him; and he avoided seeing them ever since. 

He saw them now, once he stepped, cautious but fearless, into their fragrant darkness. The queen's garden grew wild over the two decades, thorny vines crawling over each other, ferns claiming the tiniest cracks in the stones, heavy white flowers reaching their petals for his hands and cheeks and hair. The path towards the middle of the garden was barely visible; he stepped on it the way one enters the belly of a giant beast, and reached his hand for his sword. 

The little maid was sitting, cross-legged, at his right hand side, flowers in her hair and vines crawling over her hands and bare feet. She caught his eye, and said nothing, and didn't move. He pressed forward, and the green opened up for him, letting him see the clear patch of stone in the middle of the garden, and the woman.

Her clothes shocked Zussa; he put her in greys and whites, twenty years ago, and over the decades thought of them as her own skin. Now her robes were red, red, red, crimson and scarlet, blood and flowers; the golden coins weighted the edge of her cowl, the hem of her clothes. Her feet were bare, heedless of the cold stone under them. 

She smiled at him, smiled at him, smiled at him. If he could see, he'd see the shadows gathering over her shoulders: an old woman pressing the threads into the queen's waiting palms, and one behind her, and one behind her, and one behind her, living and dead, asleep and awake. But he could not; he reached for his sword, all thoughts of preserving the queen's life forgotten, on nothing but an animal sense of danger, and it was too late by then. 

Zinnia opened her hands, and the walls around her garden fell.


End file.
